Sunday, February 05, 2017

Sunday Post

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence on Sunday
defended President Donald Trump's attack on a federal judge who blocked
a travel ban on citizens of seven mainly Muslim nations, as the first
major legal battle of the Trump administration intensified.

The new Republican president blasted U.S. District Judge James
Robart as a "so-called judge" on Saturday, a day after the jurist in
Seattle issued a temporary restraining order on the ban. A U.S. appeals
court later on Saturday denied the government's request for an immediate
stay of the ruling.

"The president of the United States has every right to
criticize the other two branches of government," Pence said on NBC's
program "Meet the Press."

It is unusual for a sitting president to attack a member of the
judiciary, which the U.S. Constitution designates as a check on the
power of the executive branch and Congress.

U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Senate
Judiciary Committee, said Trump seems intent on precipitating a
constitutional crisis.

The Liberal government is trying to ensure Canadian dual-nationals can
still use their Nexus trusted-traveller cards at the border following
word that cards have been revoked, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale
says.

The machete-wielding attacker who was
shot by a soldier outside France's Louvre museum refused to answer
investigators on Sunday after being formally placed into custody at a
hospital, a source at the Paris prosecutor's office said.

Abdullah Reda al-Hamahmy, an Egyptian, was shot several times
on Friday after attacking soldiers as he cried "Allahu Akbar" in what
French President Francois Hollande described as a terrorist attack.

"The first interview took place this morning, but it turned out
to be a short one. For the moment, he refuses to talk to
investigators," the source at the prosecutor's office said.

Hamahmy's father told Reuters it was "nonsense" to suggest his
son was a terrorist, saying that the youngest of four children was a law
graduate who had been working in the United Arab Emirates for about
five years and was in Paris on business.

Hamed Shafia, convicted of first-degree murder in the so-called
honour killings of his three sisters and his father's first wife, is
taking his request for a new trial to the Supreme Court of Canada.

His
lawyers, Scott Hutchison and Samuel Walker of Toronto-based Henein
Hutchison LLP, are arguing that the Ontario Court of Appeal erred when
it refused to consider fresh evidence pertaining to Shafia's year of
birth.

Shafia was believed to be 18 when he was arrested along
with his mother and father for the deaths of Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and
Geeti Shafia, 13, and Rona Mohammad Amir, 50, in July 2009.

Their bodies were found in the Montreal family's Nissan, which was submerged in a lock on the Rideau Canal in Kingston, Ontario.

Hamed Shafia,
his father Mohammad Shafia and mother Tooba Yahya were convicted in
2012 and received automatic life sentences with no chance of parole for
25 years.

After conviction and sentence, however, the family
discovered documents that listed Shafia's birth date as Dec. 31, 1991,
which would have made him 17 when the crimes occurred.

That means
he could have been tried under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, which
would have subjected him to a less severe sentence.

Liberal MP Justin Trudeau said the government should not call honour
killings "barbaric" in a study guide for would-be Canadian citizens.

On Monday, the federal government updated its Discover Canada
guide, a pamphlet given to new immigrants to help explain life in Canada
and prepare them for the citizenship test.

Among other things, it tells new Canadians that gay marriage is OK and forced marriages are not.

But the guide also says: "Canada's openness and generosity do not
extend to barbaric cultural practices that tolerate spousal abuse,
'honour killings,' female genital mutilation, forced marriage or other
gender-based violence."

"Those guilty of these crimes are severely punished under Canada's criminal laws," it reads.

Trudeau blasted the Conservatives for using the term "barbaric,"
even though it's been in the guide since 2009. Forced marriages are the
only new item on the list.

"There's nothing that the word 'barbaric' achieves that the words
'absolutely unacceptable' would not have achieved," Trudeau, the
Liberal immigration critic, said.

A Liberal MP said he had no idea he had posed at an event Friday
beside a man the Canadian government is deporting for being a former
member of a terrorist organization.

Photos posted on the Facebook and Twitter pages of Michael Levitt,
the Member of Parliament for York Centre, showed the politician outside
the Imdadul Islamic Centre with Jason Pippin.

The Immigration and Refugee Board ordered Pippin’s deportation last
July, ruling he had been a “fully committed” member of the Pakistani
terrorist group Lashkar-e-Tayiba in 1996 and ‘97.

The encounter took place at one of several “ring of peace” events in
the city. Jews and Christians surrounded the highly-regarded Islamic
centre in a show of support for the Muslim community following Sunday’s
deadly attack at a Quebec City mosque.

Dartmouth College students and faculty members protested
President Trump’s executive order on immigration by wearing hijabs to show, as
one professor wrote, that “we’re all Muslims now.”

When these broads are done playing Muslim and getting patted on the back for being "brave", they can go back to being silly creatures who can't shut their fool mouths for want of anything. A real apostate in Islam gets killed.

While opponents were attacking O’Leary for spending too much time in the
U.S. or not being Conservative enough, they were hitting Bernier on his
ideas about reforming federal equalization payments to provinces. “They are afraid,” he said. “I think they think that they won’t be
able to have support in Quebec and in Atlantic Canada.… My policy, it’s
on principle.”

Bernier said he wouldn’t end equalization payments, which help poorer
provinces compensate for their economic woes, relative to wealthier
provinces.

Bernier is wrong.

He should cut everyone off.

Eastern provinces are extorting welfare from the rest of Canada and it has to stop.

The last time I checked, Rona Ambrose didn't participate in pay-for-play:

The
Conservatives confirm their interim leader took a Caribbean vacation on
a billionaire's yacht around the time members of her caucus were
criticizing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for vacationing on a private
island owned by the Aga Khan.

A
spokesman for Rona Ambrose verified a report by political news website
iPolitics that the acting Conservative leader and her partner J.P.
Veitch soaked up the sun last month on the yacht of energy mogul Murray
Edwards around the islands of St. Barths and Saint Martin.

However
Mike Storeshaw told The Canadian Press in an email that Ambrose was far
more open about her vacation than Trudeau was about his winter holiday.

"Ms.
Ambrose has followed all rules that apply to her with respect to her
holiday, and was open and transparent with the Conflict of Interest and
Ethics Commissioner, unlike the Prime Minister," Storeshaw said.

Storeshaw
said Ambrose paid for a flight on a charter along with a number of
friends — none of whom, he said, are public office holders.

"Ms.
Ambrose discussed her holiday with the Office of the Conflict of
Interest and Ethics Commissioner, who verified that it was within the
rules," he added.

The
iPolitics report said Ambrose took her vacation from Jan. 3-14. During
the same time members of her caucus called for the ethic commissioner
Mary Dawson to probe both Trudeau's stay at the Aga Khan's exclusive
private island in the Bahamas and his use of the Aga Khan's private
helicopter to the island after he and his family jetted down to the
Caribbean.

The
federal Conflict of Interest Act and Trudeau's own guidelines for his
cabinet ministers bar the use of sponsored travel in private aircraft,
allowing it only in exceptional circumstances and only with prior
approval from the commissioner.